How about Invincibility? 6 life lessons from the poem “Invictus” by William Earnest Henley

Have you ever felt that life is so unfair? Have you ever felt so defeated? Have you ever felt so weak as if both your knees were chopped and can no longer walk? But at the same time, just decided not to care anymore?

Have you ever embraced that pain so much that you felt it made you invincible?

Well, how about this poem?

Life tests us and gives us dark times

Well, “out of the night black as the pit” that covers us all in fact, are we ever really grateful for our unconquerable souls.

No one says life is beautiful and you expect the sentence to have finished. Because if it does, you only look at it from one side, one half, one part. What about the other part? Is it really forgotten, or is it really overlooked, and even denied?

Who are we really to only assume how good our lives are when we forget the dark, painful side thereof?

Because it shows us dark sides of other people, hard situations, mess, overwhelming questions to ever bare have sufficient answers to, etc.

So basically, life tests us, traps us and puts us in gloomy cases full of horror and danger, because it has to, it s part of its duty to show its other side in which we must believe and deal with. We are responsible for having to live with both sides of life, its good and bad times.

Lesson to learn: We are created in this world to put up with life and its rosy, hyper as well as dangerous and dim intertwined halves, just like the Yin and Yang, one white with a black dot and vice versa, as it remains our responsibility to be strong and endure the pain it gives us.

Fell Circumstances Can Come Your Way

There are good, exciting and important circumstances that happen to us. We appreciate them as they are, enjoy their time, get excited for what they have to offer, and understand their essence at different time and situations.

But to what extent are we to live in these circumstances, when we know that we can get hit with slightly, moderately and extremely difficult circumstances at diverse places, times, seasons, situations, etc?

These challenging events can test our patience, passion, emotions and psyche even to the utmost level where we cannot handle it anymore. These can kill, harm, hurt us and leave wounds and scars too deep to close, too wide to narrow down and too long to shorten and shrink.

We go through challenging times, as simple as starting school for the first time, having to leave our families to study, work and travel abroad, being in a relationship that costs your family s dissatisfaction, and more. We get into times where we have to lose precious close people, sacrifice their love and affection to us in order for us to move on and grow up.

Even worse, we know how deadly it can be to have someone die abruptly. You know when you feel so utterly regretful of why you have not spent enough or more time with that person you cherished for so long. You feel guilty and ashamed of yourself for letting that person go when you most needed them, but at the same time you have to convince yourself that is wasn’t in your control to have let them go like that, and it s life with its fell circumstances.

Lesson Learnt: Life, as harsh as it can be, has to show us what difficult, even deadly situations and circumstances to let us know how imperfect we are, and has to test our patience in every regard to remind us that fell circumstances can come our way and it is up to us to deal with them, because we all know how strong we can be.

Chances Can Sometimes be Really Low, Even Unlikely

The speaker in the poem talk about how chances can bully us and beat so violently with a bludgeon that we bleed. We can still say that we are vulnerable to chances, they love to shock, terrify and beat us.

I mean, who are we to assume that whatever it is that we expect to happen actually happens? Or lets look at it this way… no matter how far we go with the potential of things, the possibility and the far and wide sea of possibilities of something to happen, we remain nothing but a spec of dust in that sea.

Why? Because, chances are usually extremely low, sometimes even unexpected, or even can slap us with a total of 180° of unexpected circumstances. Yet, we always bet on ourselves and others and the world if anything we assume happens, actually ever does.

The speaker describes the breadth to which the chances of failing and how brutal they are to us is extravagant. Wondering why? Because it has always been like this. When we go on a journey, to a new place, country, case, situation, state, you name it, the chances of facing obstacles be it small, moderate of enormous for that matter always exceed our expectations

Therefore, what the lesson he, the speaker teaches us is we are always going through adventures and odysseys full of chances, possibilities and opportunities to predict. These can shock, thrill, excite, bore and also beat us, but we are powerful and are supposed to handle them the best way we can.

We get Knocked Down But Get Back Up

Hey, if you are familiar with this song, you know what this poem is about.

We get knocked down the uncontrollable circumstances, chances, times, even people. We fall on our knees in despair, anger, sadness and sometimes hopelessness that anything changes to the better.

We get shocking events happening to us, an extremely low probability of something we least expect to happen and yet DOES.

BUTTTTT, and regardless, WE ARE STRONG! and get back up no matter what.

Not necessarily because we have to, got no choice and hopeless. Rather, it is due to the fact that we know our inner strength, how endless our patience can be, and how big our determination to far and beyond what we expect ourselves to become can be.

So what are we to grasp? Easy poesy: we get hit, beaten up, defeated and discouraged but realize our hearts made of steel and continue onwards any how.

We Must be in Control of Ourselves and What We Do

When we find ourselves hit by hardships that can become sometimes to harsh to handle, we often fall to our emotions, victims to our feelings and allow for them to take our places and express themselves in our place.

The bad news is that emotions can get the best of us, they can possess and control us, hurt and cause us to mentally drown and potentially unintentionally hurt someone close to us.

Are we ever in control of what other do to us? Are we ever in control of what they think, how they think, what they say, how they react and respond to us? Saying no and assuming otherwise is the unreal, that actually almost never happens in the real world.

The good news is that we in control of our everything: emotions, speech, actions, reactions, thoughts and more. This goes without saying in our daily lives, but especially the case for tough situations and outlooks in our lives. The speaker in the poem does not cry, wince and is not afraid, but sounds proud, with his head held high, chest up, tummy down and with dignity despite him (should I say) metaphorically (or actually, it depends on how you see it) bleeding from the bludgeoning of chances.

What we learn? No matter how hard things get, how hard we fall, how hard difficult circumstances and chances beat and step on us, having to become self aware enough to manage our emotions and keep them under control is an absolute must while we still can.

Gratefulness is a Must for Our Bravery and Invincibility

We can say that we can handle the worst of things, deal with them effectively. We can admit how good we are with taming our emotions and preventing their control over our mental and physical health.

But as the speaker mentions, when in the beginning of the poem he mentions his thanks to the gods for his “unconquerable soul”, we should have the seed of gratefulness and appreciation sown inside of us. He boasts about his fierceness and dry tears despite the horrors of the prospect and the difficult circumstances and chances. He displays his pride for being the “master of his fate and captain of his soul”.

If he can be this courageous master and proud captain of whatever fate has to show him and what his soul has to go through, so can we.

What matters the most, is not how low chances are, narrow our paths may be or how unfair life is, but what does is our way of handling the challenges to come.

So lets end this on a positive note: We get injured, crossed, cursed and shattered by all the negative dark side of things life presents us with. We undeniably go through tough times of burdensome events and have to endure violent chances all the time, despite which we must be and stay strong. On the ending note, we have to appreciative of the strength we have and are gifted with. That is how we can plainly and fully survive.

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